Astronauts remotely control planetary rover from space

K10 Black planetary rover navigates the boulder field in the Roverscape during a Surface Telerobotics Operational Readiness Test at NASA's Ames Research Center. (Credit: Image courtesy of NASA/Johnson Space Center)

On June 17 and July 26, NASA tested the Surface Telerobotics exploration concept, in which an astronaut in an orbiting spacecraft remotely operates a robot on a planetary surface, reported Science Daily.

"The initial test was notable for achieving a number of firsts for NASA and the field of human-robotic exploration," said Terry Fong, Human Exploration Telerobotics project manager and director of the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., which designed and manages the tests.

"Specifically, this project represents the first fully-interactive remote operation of a planetary rover by an astronaut in space."

These tests represent the first time NASA's open-source Robot Application Programming Interface Delegate (RAPID) robot data messaging system was used to control a robot from space.

RAPID was originally developed by NASA's Human-Robotic Systems project and is a set of software data structures and routines that simplify the process of communicating information between different robots and their command and control systems.

RAPID has been used with a wide variety of systems including rovers, walking robots, free-flying robots and robotic cranes.

NASA will conduct a final test session with the space station in August. During this test, engineers and an astronaut will inspect the deployed antenna and study human-robot interaction.

"During future missions beyond low-Earth orbit, some work will not be feasible for humans to do manually," said Fong. "Robots will complement human explorers, allowing astronauts to perform work via remote control from a space station, spacecraft or other habitat."